Lou's Views: KDE vs. Ximian

Wasteful in-fighting

February 13, 2001

By
Lou Grinzo

I had a little spare time Monday night, so I thought I'd do a quick e-mail
and news check before working on a couple of projects. And what do I see on
LinuxToday.com, but the latest eruption
of the of the "war" between the desktop environment camps, this time between
KDE and Ximian. (See the links he
re, here, and here in case you missed it. In essence, the KDE folks were upset over
Ximian's practice of buying "ad words" on Google to display ads and links
luring people to Ximian's site when someone searches on a KDE-related
token.)

Even though cooler heads have prevailed and major damage was averted, the
Linux community just experienced their own version of the infamous "thirteen
days" of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Still, these events will only deepen
some of the rifts in the Linux developer and user bases, and for no good
purpose. In that spirit of having just dodged a bullet, let me provide
everyone concerned with a little free advice from someone (me) who's been
through the industry meat grinder a few more times than most of the people
on these two projects, not to mention the countless hordes getting riled up
about this: Shut up, grow up, and stop fighting each other instead of your
common enemies.

Let's do the Ximian side of this debacle first: This was a perfectly
legal but thoroughly nasty and stupid thing to do. Did you really think no
one would figure out you were behind this, or if they did, that the
hyper-political segment of the Linux community (let alone the more rational
contingent) wouldn't go ballistic over it? This is roughly the equivalent
of spray painting your logo on the front door of your competitor's
headquarters, and getting filmed by the security cameras that are in plain
sight. It was ill-conceived, amateurish, and just about the last thing
Linux and Free/Open Source software needed right now. Thanks for not only
bringing a powder keg to the party, but then lighting the fuse. The only
good thing that can be said is that Ximian had the sense to snuff out the
fuse in time.

I have more sympathy for the KDE side of this mess, but they get at least
a smidge some of the blame for escalating this matter. The KDE guys aren't
the most reserved bunch, as long-time watchers of this little soap opera
will recall, but we shouldn't let that hide the fact that they're the
victims. It's hard to condemn someone who's upset because it was their
building that got spray painted, when many of us would probably have reacted
much the same way. Still, I wish they would have taken a little more
reserved approach in their initial response and not resorted to talking
about "legal risks" and using other language that only threatened to worsen
the situation that we all should have been trying to get under control.
Instead of publishing this open letter to Ximian they should have kept the
conversation private until it was resolved. Their letter to Ximian is here, although it might be
changed by the time you see this editorial.

As I see it, there are really three sides to this mess: Ximian, KDE, and
the KDE- and Qt-related companies, like theKompany.com and Trolltech. The
third group has the most reason to be outraged. If I worked for one of
them, particularly Trolltech, a company that has been and continues to be
beat up over a long-dead licensing issue, and had nothing to do with this
situation, I'd be just about ready to pop a vein my forehead. Notice that
Trolltech wasn't dragged into this by implication (KDE is written using
their Qt framework), but directly: One of the ad words Ximian rented on
Google is "trolltech", which as of 10:20PM Monday night (east coast US) was
still triggering the Ximian "Free Linux Desktop" ad and link, but was
ad-free Tuesday morning. I've had considerable contact with Haavard Nord
and Aron Kozak of Trolltech, and they're very classy, level-headed people,
which only makes this situation an even clearer case of "when bad things
happen to good people", and that much more distasteful.

Before we give in to the temptation to stroll too far down the righteous
indignation path, let's step back and take the long view of things. Here we
have Linux and its band of brave knights making phenomenal inroads into
Fortress Microsoft, deeper and faster than almost anyone (including yours
truly) had predicted. But instead of focusing our collective resources on
that goal, a fistfight suddenly breaks out between two of the most important
knights, and for a particularly stupid reason. One can only imagine what
King Bill, perched in his golden tower, thinks as he peers down on this
scene, and how easily his Royal PR Machine can turn this to his advantage.
(OK, I'll stop straining the ye olde metaphor; you get the point.)

I suppose if you tried really hard you could come up with a dumber way
than this for the Linux camp to waste resources (money, time, energy, and
attention), but you'd have to put a lot of thought into it, probably more
thought, in fact, than Ximian did before it pulled this stunt in the first
place.

Finally, it's worth pointing out that this in-fighting is not only
wasteful and silly, but it's amateurish. One side buys ad words for
another's trademarks on a search engine? Oh puh-leeze. Wait until
Microsoft is fully engaged in fighting Linux (and I guarantee you they've
barely started), and they start unleashing things far more subtle and more
effective than this or Steve Balmer's occasional back-handed swipes at
Linux. Then we'll see just how hard hardball can get. But that's OK, we'll
be ready to handle it, thanks to the rigorous PR warfare training we've had
in AdGate.